Brands Look At Magazines For Experience

An article in the Telegraph looks at how brands are creating lifestyle magazine to connect with their consumers.

As resistance to junk mail grows, big businesses are being forced to come up with ever-smarter ways to encourage their customers to spend more.

Welcome to the new world of uber-marketing. Out goes the junk, in come targeted, glossy, subliminal sales techniques. From Tesco to the AA, from Saga to Prudential, UK businesses are plundering their databases and using increasingly sophisticated methods to entice their customers to splash out.

Whether they are using customer magazines, e-mails or podcasts, the name of the game for businesses is to get close to their clientele.

“It is about creating a relationship with the customer that is about more than hard economics. It is about making the customer feel part of a club,” says Alan Giles, the chief executive of HMV Group, the retailer, of the new marketing zeitgeist.

…The grand illusion of customer magazines is that they appear to be the opposite of junk mail – where the former are subtle and editorially driven, the latter are crude and direct. This has lead to some detractors claiming that customer magazines are the marketing equivalent of the wolf in sheep’s clothing – a cynical sales tool purporting to be a glossy magazine. Not so, say the publishers.

“Customers acknowledge that they are being sold to. Our research shows that they are savvy,” says the APA’s Hutchison. Recent APA research shows that such magazines lead to an average sales uplift of 8 per cent. The return on investment can be much higher. TUI, the customer magazine of the holiday group that includes Thomson Holidays, estimates that it earns £4 back for every £1 that it spends on its magazine.

Telegraph | Money | How mags get goods into bags